Branson: Virgin Galactic could get us to Oz in two hours

Space travel also future of air travel

Sir Richard Branson believes that the technology used for Virgin Galactic will also bring much faster transcontinental travel.

In an interview with TechRadar and T3, the Virgin founder explained that flight times from London to the other side of the world could be cut to the same time as a short-haul flight to Europe.

"I think that Virgin Galactic, our spaceship company, will initially be sending people into space and we're not that many months away from that happening," he said.

Similar tech

"But our engineers are also very keen to see if they can create transcontinental travel using similar technology that send people from London to Australia in a fraction of the time that it currently takes to go there, maybe two and a half hours, two hours," he added.

"That's depending how much time it takes to get through the airport etc!"

"When I talk about intercontinental travel it is possible that you'll travel into space on the way to Australia and pop back down again.

"You can become an astronaut on your way to Australia. It is the most exciting thing Virgin has yet done."

The first flight of Virgin Galactic is already sold out, but you can still claim a ticket for later flights at just $200,000.

But, those prices are expected to plummet back to Earth relatively quickly, and soon we could be getting used to whizzing across the globe via space, in a matter of a couple of hours.